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High Resolution(Source: livefrmnowhere, via thereisnogod)
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The GOP Candidates Want Never-Ending War on Terror | Peter Beinart
[At the foreign poilcy debate this week, the candidates] simply declared that because there is a threat, America remains at war. Sure, there’s a terrorist threat and there always will be, even if Al Qaeda itself goes out of business. But if that’s all it takes for the United States to be at war, the United States will never be a peacetime nation again, which means we’ll never be able to regain the civil liberties we enjoyed before 9/11, or tame a defense and homeland security budget that has grown so massively in the last decade.
We’ve been through this before. The idea that America was fighting a “Cold War” against “global communism” when in fact we were engaged in a power struggle with a calcifying Soviet Union and a series of left-wing Third World movements over which it had little influence distorted American foreign and domestic policy for decades. But at least the “Cold War” was an oxymoron—it suggested a state of tension that did not result in the taking up of arms. “War on terror,” which suggests active military conflict, is even worse. Travel around America today. Do we look like a nation at war? The small segment of the American population that serves in the military is still fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. But the rest of the nation has utterly lost interest. And when those two wars mercifully end—as they likely will no matter who is president in the next few years—America will be a peacetime nation again. At some level, the leading Republican presidential candidates understand that. They would never dream of suggesting that America’s “war on terror” requires higher taxes, a draft or anything else that would burden the ordinary American. And yet they keep using the language of war to insulate America’s defense budget from serious scrutiny and to suggest that people accused of terrorism don’t deserve basic protections under the law.
As George Orwell famously noted, bad public policy often hides behind dishonest language. Nations that truly are permanently at war generally go bankrupt or become police states or both. Nations whose leaders pretend they are permanently at war when they are actually not simply suffer a profound distortion of their national priorities. In the United States today, that is bad enough.
Oh, this.
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High ResolutionThey who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-Benjamin Franklin
This is what happens when the government is allowed to pass bills like The Patriot Act.
(via amodernmanifesto)
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![fuckyeahdrugpolicy:
Wasn’t the PATRIOT Act Supposed To Be About Stopping Terrorism? | Techdirt
The PATRIOT Act was all about stopping terrorism, right? We were told that special provisions that ate away at our civil liberties were needed specifically to catch dangerous terrorists — and that the reason for such an abdication of our rights had nothing to do with simply giving the government more useful surveillance powers. Aaron DeOliveira points us to a fascinating chart that shows how often law enforcement has been using “sneak-and-peek” warrants. These warrants let officials search private property without letting the target of the investigation know. Again, we were told that these expanded powers were needed to stop terrorism. So what have they been used for? Take a look. +
via New York Magazine -
Before 9/11, when politicians spoke of “patriots,” they usually meant soldiers. Now prosecutors and the FBI were reaching for the same vanity—that they were the hard tip of freedom—and the same license to pursue enemies without much oversight or meddling. When it was signed into law six weeks after the attacks, the act made it easier to wiretap American citizens suspected of cooperating with terrorism, to snoop through business records without notification, and to execute search warrants without immediately informing their targets (a so-called sneak-and-peek [P2]). Privileges once reserved for overseas intelligence work were extended to domestic criminal investigations. There was less judicial oversight and very little transparency. The bill’s symbolism mattered also, signaling that the moral deference previously given to the Special Forces would be broadened until it encompassed much of the apparatus of the American state. Local prosecutors, military policemen, CIA lawyers—these were indispensable patriots too. +
I’d say unbelievable, but it’s totally believable.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lrbj6b1yx21qc1ca1o1_400.jpg)
Wasn’t the PATRIOT Act Supposed To Be About Stopping Terrorism? | Techdirt
The PATRIOT Act was all about stopping terrorism, right? We were told that special provisions that ate away at our civil liberties were needed specifically to catch dangerous terrorists — and that the reason for such an abdication of our rights had nothing to do with simply giving the government more useful surveillance powers. Aaron DeOliveira points us to a fascinating chart that shows how often law enforcement has been using “sneak-and-peek” warrants. These warrants let officials search private property without letting the target of the investigation know. Again, we were told that these expanded powers were needed to stop terrorism. So what have they been used for? Take a look. +
via New York Magazine -
Before 9/11, when politicians spoke of “patriots,” they usually meant soldiers. Now prosecutors and the FBI were reaching for the same vanity—that they were the hard tip of freedom—and the same license to pursue enemies without much oversight or meddling. When it was signed into law six weeks after the attacks, the act made it easier to wiretap American citizens suspected of cooperating with terrorism, to snoop through business records without notification, and to execute search warrants without immediately informing their targets (a so-called sneak-and-peek [P2]). Privileges once reserved for overseas intelligence work were extended to domestic criminal investigations. There was less judicial oversight and very little transparency. The bill’s symbolism mattered also, signaling that the moral deference previously given to the Special Forces would be broadened until it encompassed much of the apparatus of the American state. Local prosecutors, military policemen, CIA lawyers—these were indispensable patriots too. +
I’d say unbelievable, but it’s totally believable.
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High ResolutionTom Tomorrow, you compleat me.
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Civil liberties always get in the way.
“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” - Thomas Jefferson
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